Rank Hovis Flour Mills

Flour mills, dating circa the 1860s and designed by Edward Welby Pugin. The building is constructed of stock brick with red brick detailing. It is five storeys high, featuring a plinth-like ground floor, a segmentally headed arcaded middle stage encompassing the first and second floors, brick bands to the third floor, and a segmentally arcaded fourth floor. A gabled, full-height cross wing extends from the rear, accompanied by stepped side wings. The building comprises seven bays, all with metal casements. A three-storey forebuilding, a later addition, echoes the original detailing and above it, on the main block, is a single large, pointed window set in a multi-moulded rebate with a crow-stepped raised surround. The forebuilding has an open arcade and a glazed ground floor, leading to an early corrugated iron-clad granary/silo/storage of indeterminate date located to the left. Internally, the first, second, and third floors are supported by original cast iron Tuscan-style columns; however, the original steam-driven machinery has been removed and replaced with 20th-century electrically-driven equipment. The granary/silo/storage to the left is not included in the listing. The mills were originally designed for the Isle of Thanet Steam Flour Mills, as referenced in Busson’s Ramsgate (pages 129-30).